Air cleaner housings are typically arranged to support one or more air filter elements within and two or more air cleaner tubes attached thereto to bring dirty air into the air cleaner housing and to carry clean air out of the air cleaner housing. The air cleaner tubes, in turn, are also connected to various components such as an intake manifold in the case of clean air in an air cleaner housing for motor vehicles. In order for an air cleaner housing to be effective, it should provide an adequate seal between various components within the housing to prevent air from leaking around the air filter element(s) to the clean air side without first passing through the air filter element(s). In addition, some sort of access port should be provided on the housing to permit replacement of the air filter elements.
Currently, air cleaner housings are available in a variety of shapes and configurations. Many provide a separate access location to facilitate replacement of an air filter element within the housing. For example, the housing may comprise two shells in which the top shell is removable to provide access to the air filter element disposed on the bottom shell. Unfortunately, such configuration requires even tensioning of the two shells along its entire periphery edge in order to provide an adequate seal; hence, many fasteners are needed around the periphery of the shells and a significant amount of time and manual dexterity is required to properly loosen and tighten these fasteners. Other air cleaner housings provide openings for attaching air cleaner tubes to the housing. However, similar to providing access locations to facilitate filter element replacements, such openings on the housing presents additional problems in maintaining adequate sealing between components to prevent undesirable dirty air movement. Typically the air cleaner tube must be attached to the housing using cumbersome attachment devices and/or sealants to insure a close enough fit, or the air cleaner tube has to be permanently attached to the housing to get around the sealing problem. The primary shortcoming of this configuration is the decrease in maneuverability of the air cleaner housing system within a confined space such as in a motor vehicle since the housing and its attached air cleaner tube acts as one unit, as well as the need to possibly replace both the housing and the attached air cleaner tube even if only one part has been damaged.
Thus, there is a need for an air cleaner housing system that is capable of providing relatively easy access to replace air filter elements disposed within the housing, an inexpensive and easy to operate attachment device for attaching the air cleaner tube to the housing, the ability to attach and detach the air cleaner tube repeatedly as desired, and providing adequate seal(s) between the various components within the housing to prevent air from leaking around to the clean air side without first passing through the air filter element.